


Transition

by gnx (LiesArePartiallyTrue)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, though not much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3262505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiesArePartiallyTrue/pseuds/gnx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It occurs to you, somewhere along the line, that Will isn't what you thought he would be. You think it's safe to say, somewhere a bit further along the line, that you're in love with your best friend instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transition

It occurs to you, somewhere along the line, that Will isn't what you thought he would be. That realization doesn't strike you as suddenly as you confess it – it's something that came in bits and pieces, you think. 

You knew there were things about the way he treats your relationship that unnerved you instead of unearthing you, but what probably makes you put the foot down is neither of them. It's not the shadowtravelling issue he has, even though it's been months since you've last been allowed to actually shadowtravel just for the sake of privacy; it's not the weeks of blank spaces between the few dates you've actually gone on together, even though you'd made clear that you wanted to know where the both of you stand. It's not even the way Will talks to Jason, brows slightly scrunched, nose raised proudly, like that isn't your best friend, like he's not permitted to care for you (like that's only limited to Will, you remember thinking before you'd shoved that thought away).

What makes you put the foot down is all of that and yet none of it at all – a combination of all your insecurities that Will fuels, when he doesn't put much thought into anything you ever do. He tries to keep you in line with the damned 'doctor's orders' all the time and treats you like there's something wrong with you.

And you know that, oh gods, do you know that. You've spent years feeding it to yourself, because back then, you'd been too starved (for love, compassion, just a little bit of reassuring, anything--) and you knew you'd ruin everything had you allowed yourself to act on your own hunger (you remember thinking that you're broken, that there's something easily perverted inside of you that you had to rip out for the sake of everyone else. You'd dream of it – the blood used to rim your eyes and it terrified you).

You know it, but Will isn't supposed to; he isn't supposed to make you feel so trapped. That's not how relationships work, if Frank and Hazel are anything to go by.

Whenever you attempt to talk to Will about your nightmares, he brushes you off with a few lines of, “We all get those, it's a demigod thing”, like you don't know that. You feel like you're just a moody teenager in his eyes.

For awhile, you try to match his pace, because you think he makes you normal. You swallow your pride and take everything Will dishes out, but it occurs to you, somewhere along the line, that you can't ignore all the red lights in your head like that (and the skeleton butterflies aren't there to distract you anymore).

So you march up to Will on a Wednesday while he's catching a break from patching up some Hephaestus kids, you sit him down and you say:

“We need to talk.”

“About what?” He's smiling. 

“You know what,” you say, flippantly. You sigh and look down at your hands where you're currently fiddling with your rings. Good job, you tell yourself – you can't even look him in the eye. “Actually, no, you probably don't.”

He's looking at you like a confused puppy when you finally look up again. You feel the urge to facepalm yourself. 

“Oh, come on, Will,” you say. “Look, you're a great guy--”

“There's a 'but' coming up, isn't there?” he sighs.

“--but, I don't think we're good at this 'mutual understanding' thing,” you nod. “I just-- let's stop trying, okay?”

Will just nods with a small 'okay' and keeps his chin lowered, like he expects of you to say something else.

You don't, because you sure as hell won't give him that 'it's not you, it's me' bullshit (it was him, you screech on the inside, before you stop; you're afraid of your selfishness), even though this isn't technically a break-up.

“Yeah,” you say as you stand up.

“Hey,” Will mutters. “See you at dinner?”

He looks so hopeful, and you smile.

“See you at dinner.”

You allow the shadows to envelope you like you haven't in awhile, and you fall backwards in them.

You're disorientated for a minute or two. Wow, you've forgotten what shadowtravelling does to you. You shake your head to clear it and you look around. You find yourself in the arena, next to a very sweaty Jason. Jason, who's in the process of sputtering water. You snort, and you tap his back a few times.

“Oh, man, Nico!” he manages to say after he's stopped coughing. The plastic bottle in his hand is pretty much squished and his eyes are as big as saucers behind the glasses. 

“Nico,” he repeats. “Gods, you haven't done that in a while.”

You give out a short laugh and he smiles at you.

“You telling me you missed it?” you joke.

“Not really, no,” he says, snorting. He freezes for a second, looking at you uncertainly. You roll your eyes and bump your shoulders together. It's been months since that kind of answer would have pissed you, but Jason still thinks he's overstepping his boundaries sometimes. Funny thing, because he's pretty much the only one (besides Hazel and Reyna, but that's a given) who's allowed in your personal space.

You revert your gaze from him onto the kids Percy's currently sparring with. 

“Jason, do you have a minute?” you ask.

“Well, as you can see, I'm currently on a break--” Jason begins cheerily, but he catches the way you're staring at him and stops. “What happened, Nico?”

You look at your faded Converses. “I cut things off with Will,” you say, so quietly you almost miss it yourself.

You don't have to look up to know Jason's staring at you with that intent blue gaze of his that the glasses can't cover. 

“Oh, Nico.” 

You shake your head at him. You're not sad about it, you think. In fact, you feel so relieved you could cry, but you also feel like suddenly, the world is weighing on your shoulders. You feel like you've disappointed it somehow. All of a sudden, you really feel the need to cry.

“Can we go somewhere else?” you look at Jason. He looks at you like he's about to say something, but then he just shrugs and yells at Percy that he's taking the day off.

Percy yells back something that sounds suspiciously like “Oh come on, screw you, dude!”, but Jason ignores him.

“Can you shadowtravel us to your cabin?” he asks. You nod. He clasps your hands together and you summon your shadows.

You're less dizzy when they finally spit you out in Cabin 13, but Jason looks like he's about to puke. You snort – he has as much tolerance for the darkness as Will does (but at least he's ready to embrace it when you ask, is what your traitorous mind supplies you with).

You plop yourself on your bed, and Jason drops on the floor. Those are your usual places for when one of you needs to talk. The giant statue in Jason's cabin isn't very inviting in terms of gut-spilling, you've both noticed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jason asks.

You want to be honest with him, so you say, “No. But I have to.”

“You know I won't force you to say anything--”

“I know, Jason.” You lie back so you don't have to look at the puppy eyes he's probably giving you. “I just-- I need this off my chest.”

“Okay,” he says and waits for you to continue.

“I, uh, 'm not sure what to begin with. Like, at first I was scared of liking him, you know?” Of course Jason knows, you'd spent weeks whining to him about it. He stays silent.

“But then, I came to terms with it-- it was part of me and it wasn't wrong. I think Will kind of helped me with that realization.” Jason probably helped you the most, but you don't say that. Now's not the time to get sappy.

“At first it was great, you know, and it was like he really cared. I even thought the 'doctor's orders' thing was cute-- I mean, obviously I wasn't happy about the whole 'you shall not shadowtravel' ordeal, but I think I swallowed it because I thought it meant he worried, and you know, people just don't worry about me--” 

Jason makes that dying whale noise that you know means he can't find his words.

You lift your head slightly to peek at him, “Oh come on, Jace, you and Hazel don't count.”

“What about Reyna and Coach Hedge and Frank?”, he snorts, and you know he's going to add more people to that list.

“Reyna is like, family, and we kind of helped Coach get to his baby, so there's that. And Frank is dating my sister, he's obliged to worry.” 

You know Jason is ready to argue, so you cut him off, “And anyway, that's not the point here!” 

You're satisfied when he promptly shuts up.

“The point is, it was a nice change. But things got complicated in a while. It wasn't just the shadowtravelling aymore – he'd be like, 'Have you been eating McDonalds again,' or, 'You know, you spend too much time with Percy and Jason' – and we weren't even like, properly dating! We'd go one date per a month or two, and he wouldn't talk about it in between!”

You twist your skull ring to keep yourself from bursting in tears in frustration.

“I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be as pissed – Will and I might not have been dating, but he was still the closest to 'boyfriend' I've ever had, you know? But then he completely brushed my nightmares off. I think that's when I knew that our-- thing wasn't working out.”

You finish your monologue and you shut up. You don't feel any different.

“Ugh, talking about feelings should help,” you groan. Jason has the audacity to snort but before you can sit up to properly glare at him, he gets off the floor and crosses his legs next to you on the bed. He pulls you up and pretends to be serious.

“Yeah, well, you didn't actually tell me, how does this break-up make you feel?” He wiggles his eyebrows and you laugh. You can do this.

“Okay, first of all, are you a shrink or something?” He shrugs at you like 'probably' and you hit him. 

“And second, it wasn't a break-up – it was more like a mutual agreement to stop pretending,” you say, matter-of-factly. 

“You're not answering the question, Nico.” 

“Okay, okay!” You roll your eyes. “I guess-- I'm really relieved, you know? I can finally do the things I want to do, for myself, but it's also like I screwed everything up. Like, I shouldn't have been so selfish-- I mean, Will's a good guy, and I'm lucky I even managed to get him to go out with me at all--”

“Nico, no,” Jason says, interrupting your babbling. “You deserve happiness as much as anyone else, okay? And if Will didn't make you happy, you have no obligations towards that relationship.” 

You don't know what to say to that. 

“Tell you what,” Jason says. “how about you and I get some ice cream and commit to watching shitty rom-coms to celebrate your break-up?”

You smile so wide your cheeks hurt. “Make those shitty horror movies and I'm in.”

Jason gets up and heads for the door. He's already out when you yell, “And it's not a break-up!” after him.

You're now alone in the cabin and you think this is the moment when you make the transition from Will to Jason.

You think it's safe to say, somewhere a bit further along the line, that you're in love with your best friend. It's weird kind of realization – it feels nothing like the butterflies Will had given you at first, or the overwhelming guilt loving Percy brought. Instead, it's a warm feeling that roots itself at the bottom of your stomach. It terrifies you how comfortably it settles with you, but it also blisses you out like you've a piece of yourself you didn't know you were looking for.

It should scare you, because it's Jason. Jason, who's always been radiant smiles and friendly touches and you know this new flutter of your heart can ruin them. It should scare you, but it doesn't, because it's Jason who's accepted you with all your faults pretty much from the start. Sure, he's a dork and sometimes says the wrong thing, but he's willing to learn, just for your sake.

That's probably why you confide in him so easily, because he may try to be overwhelming when he wants to help, but he understands there are things that must stay between the two of you and honors that. There's also the excessive trust Jason puts in you, just like that. From the beginning, all you offered him for his help was a cup of poison, and he just took your word for it. You remember all the things he's always told you first since then.

You remember the time Jason came back from Camp Jupiter and went to you first. That night, you let him cry on your shoulder, because Leo had sent him an Iris Message in New Rome - it'd been the first time he'd contacted Jason at all since you'd all been convinced he was dead. He had only said he was in Paris with Calypso, and nothing more. Jason was so disappointed and angry.

You remember when he came nearly crying to you because Piper had broken it off with him. It was past midnight, but he didn't tell you the reason until the next day – Piper had thought it was time for them to get intimate, Jason had refused. You remember how, two days later, he came out to you as demisexual. You remember how everything clicked with you then, and how you let a surprised, “You weren't in love with Piper?!” slip.

The thing with the both of you is that you're each other's coping mechanism; you need each other – it's never just you and it's never just him.

So once it occurs to you that you really do love him like that, you let that love settle deep in you because you don't think you can live without it. You'll tell him soon, you tell yourself, tomorrow or next week, but for now, you're just going to enjoy things as they are. 

(You end up telling him in a month. It's an accident, but you can't bring yourself to care because he looks happy anyway. You think this will work, but you don't think for much longer after he presses his lips to yours.)

**Author's Note:**

> oh my gosh this is terrible and i hate most of it but the people of [tumblr](http://gee-nx.tumblr.com/post/109392895523/so-uhm-im-writing-this-thing-that-will-be) said they'd read it so, uh, blame them.


End file.
